Ivory and Bone

by Julie Eshbaugh

  This was a moment of both relief and horror. Who wouldn’t want to turn back rather than walk steadfastly into the rising sea? But there was no food behind us, and we knew it. No fish swam in the sterile meltwaters. Unless we came upon some seabirds soon, people would begin to succumb.

  Just then, Lo called out. From her perch atop her father’s shoulders, she said she could see a mammoth. He was out in the water farther west, and she was determined to make the kill. Before he could stop her, she climbed down from her father’s shoulders and, clutching her spear, she half ran, half swam into the deeper water.

  Of course, her father pursued her. By the time he managed to get to her, she was dropping out of sight beneath the surface, her dark head rising and falling like a bird on the water, floating and diving, floating and diving.

  But he saved her. He reached her, carried her back, got her to the safety of a warm pelt in a sled that bobbed upon the sea like a makeshift kayak.

  The entire clan strove to restore Lo to health. The effort was so total—so all-consuming—not one of us noticed what was happening to her father. Recovering his daughter had exhausted him. His arms and legs were going rigid with cold. But he said nothing. Maybe he was unable to speak. Maybe he didn’t want to distract us from trying to save Lo.

  By the time we looked around to tell him how well she was doing, his body had failed him, his legs had given out, and he had slipped away into the cold gray water.

  He was gone.

  Chev rises from his seat on the floor so abruptly, the spell is broken and my eyes fly open. For a brief moment, the familiar sight of the kitchen surprises me, as I’m thrust from the past back to the present.

  Chev paces, circling the room, running his hands over his hair, and speaking in an angry whisper only he can hear. “And yet the rest of you lived,” he says, finally. He sets a hand on a post of the hut and draws in a long, slow breath. “You all survived? How did you make the return trip without food—”

  “Lo found us food,” interjects Shava. “I was sitting in the same floating sled that she had been lifted into, was wrapped in the same pelt. She let out a wail when she learned of her father’s death, and she lunged over the side of the boat.

  “It was then that she saw it—its head resting just below the surface of the water. A mammoth. The body of a drowned mammoth. Her father must have been standing on it right before his body slid into the sea.

  “By dying as he did, he’d led us right to it. And Lo discovered it. She may have crashed into the water after something in her imagination, but the mammoth she found was very real.

  “We fashioned cutting knives at the ends of spears to reach down and slice off chunks of meat and ate them raw, right there, floating in the sleds or huddling on the points of ice. Nothing ever tasted so good.

  “That meat was our rescue, and the Divine had used Lo as the means of revealing it to us. Ever since that day—ever since that moment—Lo has been the High Elder of the clan.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “That’s ridiculous,” you say, the words snapping from your lips like wet wood popping in the flame. Your brother, who a moment ago was lost in thought, looks up as if he’d forgotten you were in the room.

  “Did you not hear the tale that I just heard?” Chev asks. “Of how the Divine used Lo to deliver food to the clan—”

  “Of course I did—”

  “And your response is to call it ridiculous? Did it not fill you with grief at the thought of our own people suffering? Did it not fill you with remorse—”

  “Grief, yes. Of course I feel grief.” Your voice breaks under the strain of the words. I think of the ten dead of your former clan, and I cannot doubt the weight of your grief. “But not remorse,” you continue. “I cannot feel remorse for something they brought upon themselves. The Bosha rejected you. We are the Olen clan now.”

  Chev kneels down in front of Shava’s mother. “May I ask you? Do you know why your mother, Gita, chose to follow Vosk?”

  “She always regretted it,” says Shava’s mother. “But he was her nephew, my cousin . . . blood. She felt she had no choice.”

  “You see, Mya? Some of the Bosha had no choice but to follow Vosk. And now they have no choice but to follow your old friend—”

  “Don’t call her my old friend. Friendship requires truth, and there is no truth in her. There never has been. She is poison, Chev! She poisoned our own people against us—”

  “I have not forgotten!” Chev’s outburst throws a hush over the room, a hush so complete I feel as if the whole world has gone silent. The rattle in the vent stops; the birds outside quiet their songs. “But Mya, you know I could never wish them harm. So how could I ever accept the thought of them forgotten, abandoned by the Divine? How could I accept the thought that the person they trusted to lead them has led them to ruin?”

  “But she has indeed led us to ruin,” Shava says, her voice calm, as if a gentle manner of telling will lessen the pain the words inflict. “The two years we have lived with the Bosha have been marked by hunger and cold. Some nights were so cold. . . .” Shava holds out her hand. The skin of each fingertip and each knuckle is darker and thicker than the unscarred skin around it—the lingering record of frostbite. “Hunger, cold, and hate. Hate for Chev for abandoning us—”

  “You hear?” you ask. Like your brother, you can no longer sit still. As he paces, you follow behind him. “Do you see now that she continues to steal the honor you deserve? That she persists at turning the hearts of your people against you?”

  Shava, too, rises from the floor slowly, and with her the tension in the room rises. Suddenly I remember the reason we all came in here. . . .

  So Shava could share a warning.

  “She does persist in turning the Bosha against you, and she has succeeded. She has sent scouts to spy on you, and these scouts have brought back stories of your prosperity in the south. They have told of the ornate canoes you use to travel to a land of plentiful game. And Lo has convinced many of the Bosha that it should all belong to them—the boats and the game and the land. Lo has told them that what the Olen possess rightly belongs to them.

  “Lo says Chev is a false leader. And she says she will kill him and take his place.”

  These words of Shava’s still hang in the air as you push through the kitchen door and out into the gathering place. Without thinking, I follow right behind you.

  “So you believe her?” I call.

  Your hasty steps come to a sudden stop. You turn slowly, your eyes wide, your head jutting forward from your shoulders. You take a single step in my direction.

  “Don’t you?”

  In the bright sunlight I study the way the sun glows hot like a burning coal in your black-as-night hair and try to answer this question, for myself as well as for you. Do I believe that Lo—a person I found to be so honest and uncontrived—is plotting to murder your brother? Or do I think that Shava is a girl with a vivid imagination and a hunger for attention?

  “I don’t know,” I finally say.

  “Then I suggest you go to your dear Lo,” you say. “Go and ask her yourself. By the time you return with her answer, my family will be gone from this camp, on our way to protect our own.”

  I don’t know what I had expected. Would a man linger in a place where he believes he is being hunted? Of course not. But if I leave now to go speak to Lo, what will you think of me? Will you see me as a peacemaker, or as a traitor to your brother?

  I remember the gift you brought me last night—the cup of folded leaves and the golden honey inside it. I want to say something, to apologize for the things I said before. I want to tell you that I never meant to offend you, and to say how sorry I am that I never knew the whole story of the death of your mother and how it was caused by a man of my own clan. I think of the pain you must feel every time you are made to come to this camp, the place she died. Even right now, standing across from me in this empty gathering place, your body practically twitches with the desire to get away
. I see this, and I want to tell you that I understand it now. I understand why you hate the north so much, why you’ve never seemed at ease here.

  But I hesitate too long, and the chance is gone. You pivot on your heel and turn away.

  My formless words dissolve on my lips as I watch you cross the gathering place and disappear into your family’s hut.

  I don’t wait around for you to leave our camp. Instead, I head straight to the water. It isn’t long before I’m halfway across the bay on my way to Lo’s camp.

  When I reach the western shore, the beach is deserted except for a few seabirds that stand like sentries, watching the water from large rocks that frame the bay like massive shoulders. The sea breeze is cold in my face—colder than it’s been all summer. Though the sky is cloudless, the wind reveals that a change is on the way. I gather my collar around my neck after dragging my kayak onto the strip of dark gray sand.

  I climb the trail to the ring of huts, but I find no one. The entire camp is deserted. From a clearing that overlooks the camp, voices float down, mixed with the structured, deliberate sound of activity. The whole clan must be together, maybe preparing a kill or readying for a celebration.

  I remember the scouting trip Shava talked about. If the story is true, perhaps the Bosha’s healer is leading a ceremony to bring good fortune to the trip.

  I’ve just found the path up to the clearing when I hear hurried footsteps heading toward me. A moment later a figure appears—Lo.

  She stops short when she sees me standing at the base of the path. For a moment, I think I see suspicion on her face. “I saw your kayak coming across the bay. I didn’t know to expect you,” she says. “Is everything all right at your camp?”

  “You didn’t come last night,” I say. “You said you would come to the feast that Chev was giving for me, but you didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” Some of the tension drains from Lo’s shoulders, and the line that formed between her eyes when she first saw me softens. “I couldn’t leave.”

  And then I remember. Before she says another word, I remember the excuse she had given for returning to her own camp yesterday.

  “I had to help my father,” she says. She smiles an easy smile, and my stomach twists. “He’s been working on a kayak, and I wanted to help.”

  Shava’s words ring in my ears. Lo’s father is dead. Shava said these very words. But not just Shava. Her mother told the story of the hunting trip that claimed his life.

  “Your father?”

  Something in Lo’s eyes dims, but she nods.

  “The clan’s High Elder?”

  “Yes. Yes, my father needed my help.” Something creeps into her voice—a tight, clipped note of impatience. “Why?”

  I glance around at the ring of huts—sparsely covered in skins, support poles leaning—but that doesn’t necessarily prove that the clan is struggling. Lo’s clan is nomadic; this camp was constructed quickly and was not intended to last.

  “What are you looking for?” The tone of Lo’s voice tightens further, until the words all but strangle in her throat. She raises a hand as if to shade her eyes from the sun, but where she stands she is sheltered by my shadow.

  “Is there someplace we could go to talk?”

  “Of course.”

  Lo leads me to a hut with gaps between the covering hides that let in light and wind. “I’m glad you came to see me,” Lo says, once the door has draped closed behind her. “I was hoping to have the chance to spend more time with you.”

  “So you could tell me more lies?”

  She takes a step back, but if she finds my accusation surprising, her face doesn’t let it show. “What lies have I ever told you?”

  “You told me that you were helping your father yesterday. But that’s not possible. Your father is dead.”

  Maybe I expected her to argue, but I’m thrown off when she smiles. “I never lied. I said I was helping my father. That’s true. I’m helping him by leading this clan. I’m helping him by building a kayak. I’m helping him. That’s all true. I never said that he was living and breathing beside me while I did it.” Lo slinks past me in the tight space, dropping down onto the pile of pelts near the center of the room. “Come sit by me.”

  “I’m fine here,” I say, though the suggestion sends a wave of heat over my skin. Lo stretches back against the warm brown of a bear hide, and I can’t help but consider sitting down, stretching out beside her, taking the time to hear her words, letting her explain everything that’s been going on.

  When she smiles, as she does now, there is a warm invitation in her eyes.

  How could this be manipulation, when her eyes glow with the openness of the wide sky that stretches above the meadow on a summer day? It can’t hurt just to sit for a moment, to speak to her. To ask a few questions and discover the truth.

  I seat myself on the floor beside Lo’s left hip. “My brother and Shava have become betrothed,” I say. “She and her mother will be rejoining our clan.”

  Something flashes across Lo’s face—a subtle flinch.

  “Because of this, she felt that she could open up to us. She shared some information with us—”

  “What kind of information?”

  Sitting close to Lo, I see wariness rise in her. The openness in her eyes abruptly clamps shut. “Can you guess what she said—”

  “Kol, stop playing with me—”

  “She said that you intend to kill Chev.”

  Lo shakes her head and starts to laugh. Not a hard laugh, but a controlled, deliberate laugh that has a statement wrapped inside it. “If I killed Chev, Mya would simply take his place. If I killed both Chev and Mya, it would be Seeri, and after her, Lees. I would have to kill them all to reunite my clan—”

  “Are you saying it’s not true?”

  This time it’s Lo who stands. She steps to the door and holds it open for a moment, looking out as if watching for someone to appear or something to happen. Then she drops the door closed and the room dims again. She stands in the doorway, light bleeding around the hide behind her, turning her into a silhouette, her features hidden in shadow. She moves back to the spot where I am seated and I scramble to my feet.

  “Do you not yet realize?” Lo says. Her voice is rich and dark, like the shadow that hides her face. “There is no Olen clan; there is only Bosha. The Olen are a false clan, led by a false leader. Chev refused to submit to my father when the Divine chose him to lead, yet despite this selfishness, they have thrived while we have suffered. Until today.

  “Their hunting range is the Bosha’s hunting range. Their bay is the Bosha’s bay. They have no right to any of it, and the Divine has chosen this day for it to be reclaimed.”

  I step sideways out of a small beam of light that falls from a gap in the hides above our heads. Finally, Lo’s face is lit enough that I can see her features. They are dressed in sharp intensity: the line between her eyes has returned, and her taut lips are as pale and bloodless as bone.

  A sound comes from the hill above the camp, a voice calling out—a name perhaps? Or maybe a word.

  Another voice answers and then another.

  They each call out the same word. With repetition it becomes clear.

  Ready.

  One after the other, voice after voice repeats: ready, ready, ready.

  Ready for what?

  The answer doesn’t take long. A sound starts at the crest of the hill but gets closer, louder, stronger—the rhythm of running feet. Another sound mixes in—something dragging across the ground.

  I push past Lo to look out the door, just in time to see at least ten of Lo’s clanspeople scrambling down the hill from the clearing, pushing newly built kayaks to the sea.

  “It’s begun,” Lo says.

  “What—”

  Lo comes up behind me, her fingers wrapping around my wrist. When she answers, her words come from right behind my ear. “They do not have to go far. We know that Chev is in your camp—he and his whole family. The process of recl
aiming what is ours has begun.”

  I turn quickly, and the twisted sneer on Lo’s lips is like a confession. “It’s too late,” she says. “It’s too late to save them from their destruction.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Her last few words set off a loud ringing in my ears. The room grows dark a moment and then brightens again, lit by an unnatural golden glow independent of the sunlight that bleeds in from outside. Lo’s face, illuminated by this eerie gleam, appears so calm, so lovely. She cannot have said the words I thought I heard.

  The ringing in my ears begins to fade, and as it does, the sound of kayaks splashing into the sea rises from the beach, mixing with the calls of gulls, circling, shouting out a warning.

  “Where are they going?”

  “I told you. The tyranny of a false leader, the wedge dividing a clan—they go to remove these things.” Lo’s voice is oddly changed—controlled, detached, rhythmic, like the voice of Shava’s mother—a storyteller’s voice. “When their orders have been carried out, the so-called Olen clan will be no more. We will again be one clan, and we will again be strong.” There is no conflict in her eyes, no hesitation in her voice.

  “Their orders are to remove a false leader?”

  “Their orders are to end Chev’s tyranny—to end the tyranny of his entire family.”

  “By what means?”

  Lo lets out a faint sigh. “I’m sure you already know.”

  She smiles at me now, and her eyes invite me to smile back. She wants my complicity. Worse, I can see she thinks she will get it.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Of course I can! Death will be repaid with death—it’s what they deserve!” And there it is—a sudden flash like lightning splitting the night sky—the hatred Shava described. The hatred I would not believe in. A bright white flash of rage—fleeting—but in its light everything comes into view. With crisp clarity, the true shapes of things are shown.

  I don’t waste time with a reply—I push past her. I’m out the door before she can react, running as fast as my legs will move. The path to the shore is steep and uneven and my feet slide on loose rocks. More than once they nearly go out from under me, but I keep running and never slow down.